Man, Elmore Leonard has a warped and wicked family tree! I’m glad I don’t have to live with them, but I’m thrilled to read about them. For those of you that haven’t been reading Leonard’s work for the last thirty years as I have, I’m referring to his fictional family members that are strung throughout his novels.
I don’t know how Leonard manages to keep all of his characters straight, but then again I have no problem remembering who each one of them is when they come on stage. Even though several books and years have passed. Leonard’s characters live and breathe, and they become real to his loyal readers. Even when a surname is dropped in the course of a story, readers who’ve read several of Leonard’s novels can probably guess at parentage and familial links.
In Road Dogs, Leonard brings back three of his most memorable characters. Jack Foley is a bank robber from Out of Sight, and he even manages a cameo of Karen Sisco, the U.S. Marshal that brought him down. George Clooney played Foley in the movie, and I could see him in the role in this novel.
Cundo Rey was the cat dancer from La Brava, the 128-pound killer who is always cool as ice and mean as a snake. He plays that role again in this novel, but he brings a lot of humor to the tale as well. I enjoyed reading about him as much as I worried about him turning on Foley at any moment.
Navarro Dawn is from Riding the Rap, the second Raylan Givens novel. There are also mentions of several other Leonard characters like Maximum Bob and Harry Arno. This book is a cornucopia of “family” photos for Leonard fans.
The plot almost seems too simple. Two inmates in prison hook up and become friends (Foley and Rey), and they decide to look out for each other. Foley doesn’t really care because he’s in for thirty years. However, Rey puts him with a brilliant lawyer and they get him out in a matter of months with time served. Suddenly Foley doesn’t know what to do with himself.
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